Jags 66-6 (Brolia 25, Ranjit 17*, Fardell 16, Perisetla 3-5) beat Milton CC 65-9 (Day 16, Brett 3-9, Ranjit 2-3) by 3 wickets.
Man of the Match - Ranjit
Cricket is back, with our earliest start ever this year in the not at all pleasant environs of early May. The weather this year has been thoroughly non-conducive to cricket, with Spring and Summer both getting themselves confused with Winter. The day before this game was due to take place there was torrential rain and a flash flood in my village, and every other skipper I spoke to had their game called off a full 24 hours before the fixture.
This week our opposition were a new team on the roster, Milton CC, who through some miraculous drainage, new covers, and general positive attitude, managed to get the game on in the surrounding gloom of a miserable looking evening. As an organiser I knew what was coming when the skies are grey, text message after text message - is the game on, are you sure, it looks grim outside, let's just go to the pub etc etc etc. Midweek evening cricket is on, until it is off. Them's the rules. If you have to turn up and shiver waiting for it to be called off, that is the price you pay. It's a thorough credit to Milton that we went ahead (even if most of them didn't turn up till 6 o'clock and the keys to the facilities were awol), with most of Cambridge under water and the weather looking grimmer by the minute, grey, and drizzly and miserable as we started.
Milton is a new venue for us, and we even have some players who live there. I managed to offend them by mentioning the Milton Pong on the what's app chat before the game - a local phenomenon that is so well known it made it onto the village Wikipedia page.
"Milton; it's more than just an open air sewage plant" - The Milton Tourist Guide
This week saw two debutants, Mr Toby Purton and Mr Sabin Ranjit. The former a recruit from sister club Histon, and the latter an actual genuine Jagex employee. For 5/6 years now we've reduced the number of actual Jagexians in our ranks, so finding more talent in the ranks at Jagex we hope is a new thing.
Matt lost the toss (idiot), the opposition put themselves into bat, and we chose a 12 over 8 ball format to keep things short with the weather and light nature presented to us this week. There was a tiny teeny little blue gap in between the clouds, but thankfully for Milton it settled over the square for their innings. Opening the bowling our side were unemployed/career break/sabbatical Brett and Mr Benjamin Savage. We used a pink ball and the damp and clouds meant Liam had a riveting opening spell, proving almost impossible to get away and threatening most balls. Runs were slow and at a premium to start with. Savage bowled his languide left arm style, Brett was all fired up with verve and aggression throughout. Parrish behind the stumps started without a helmet, but decided to bring one on in the end to allow him to stand a little closer.
Some fielding happened, I can't recall much of it other than James Barker doing a textbook long barrier, and Phillips saying some things that were less offensive than his default. Perhaps it will take him a few games to get back to his obnoxious best. Ant sat down on the boundary boards right next to a bin full of dog poo. He'd do anything for a rest that lad.
The breakthrough came when Liam took a thoroughly deserved bowled, with a ball that I think ducked in a little bit from outside off to castle the opener. The first few batsmen tried to punish Savage more than Brett, purely as Brett was proving impossible to score from. Savage gamely partnered Liam to no early reward. Brett then removed the other opener, who tried to unleash a vicious shot, but ended up tickling it through to Parrish behind the stumps. He looked a bit bemused to be given out, but he was the only one in truth who didn't really understand that he had to go.
Toby Purton came in to bowl with a nice off spin style, very controlled and promising on debut. He wasn't trying to turn it much, more just accuracy and control. Things did happen in the field. Fardell stopped one at midwicket, Savage chased a boundary down and Coslett, sporting his best Headmaster jumper, stopped a couple here and there. Ant mostly just tried to find girls on Tinder, although I think the app has blocked him now as he has been through all of the content.
Toby put one quicker ball down in his spell, and it took the batsman entirely by surprise, giving a certain LBW low, skidding and tough to defend in front of middle. The Milton skipper came out and immediately upped what had otherwise been a slow scoring rate. Brett then claimed his third wicket of the evening, the batsman trying to up the rate and pushing it high to Mr Phillips in the circle at midwicket.
James Barker came in to replace Brett and looked twirly and threatening, but also a little loose at times, so some batsmen took a little bit of a shine to him. As the batsmen unfurled, Toby put a loose one in that was dispatched, but quickly bowled a batsman shortly thereafter with a fairly standard wicket to wicket ball that he just missed. Barker gamely pressed on and eventually bowled a player, although whether the ball did anything or the batsman just had a mare, I can't recall.
Sabin came into the attack for one over. It was eventful. Slow fairly accurate and quite skiddy spin meant it was hard to get away. The Milton Captain had scored a fair few and tried to take him on. Sabin then bowled the slowest ball I can recall seeing in cricket that wasn't also loopy - and the batsman took the shot on, got all the way through it and fell over in a twirling heap a good 3 seconds before the ball got anywhere near him. It then gently passed his prone frame on the ground and plinked the stumps. The only wonder was that the ball was so slow, I thought the bails might not actually come off. It was the epitome of village cricket.
I chipped in with some comedy fielding, diving over one ball, and then turning round to a skied chance, ran all the way to it (maybe 6 feet from me) and didn't make any effort to catch it. Barker had covered some 25 meters to get close, and probably didn't take it as I got in the way. I'm here to make a contribution fellas, but it's often more for comedy value.
Savage returned for the last over and Sabin bowled another batsman, before Savage chipped in with the all important last wicket to leave Milton on 65-9, all out as they had only 10 players. Mentions go to Parrish behind the stumps keeping things pretty tight, and to the pitch, which had the least consistent bounce I can recall of any season.
At the turn, we would have been pretty confident with this total.
It turns out our confidence was perhaps a tad misplaced
However, Milton had decided to bring a lot of bowling, and they had also arranged for the small patch of blue sky that had loitered over the square to disappear, and to be replaced by some dreary drizzle instead. Parrish and Ant opened the batting and honestly, it looked very tough from the side. Parrish never really settled after offering a fine edge to the keeper first ball, and Perisetla from one end was bowling like an absolute demon, perhaps aided by the conditions, but still it was a brilliant opening spell. Ant looked a little more certain, he ran a single and then took a bit of a shine to the other opener, biffing a 4. Parrish fell shortly thereafter to a really tough ball, trying to score he saw middle and leg demolished.
Ant was joined by Phillips and decided that attacking the other opener was the right thing to do, he plundered two 4's and a 6 from an over to get us going to almost 30 after 4 overs. The other opener maintained his ridiculously high standards, and bowled Phillips with what I might call an inducker - full and hard to defend. Fardell then joined Ant for about ten seconds, before Ant perished hoiking one high into the deep. He'd looked in fabulous touch, playing on a different pitch and against different bowlers to pretty much everyone else, and had even given me some tips in the middle. The rain was coming down and the bowlers were bringing the pain - and suddenly a modest target felt a long way off.
Cozzie joined me, kept out a few balls, before he fell bowled to a pretty good full ball with the score having not advanced. Barker then joined the fray to face the comically unplayable Perisetla. He kept out a ball before being bowled by one that shot low, trying out a lovely looking drive that didn't quite make contact. The opposition laughed at this, and offered that perhaps he had thought this pitch would play like the pristine ground at Histon. No gorgeous cover drives are suitable for a Milton pitch, apparently!
Sabin joined me on debut, we were 30-5 and, appropriately enough given the venue, quite clearly in the shit. The rain continued and Sabin and I set about trying to not get out in contrasting fashion. Both of us just tried to get bat on ball, Sabin with technique and me with hand eye coordination. The Milton team were very very chirpy at this point, and there were a lot of dot balls, but having wickets in hand was key. Sabin took a leg stump guard and we tried to manipulate the ball through gaps in a packed infield, but the long grass and good bowling hampered the boundary rate, with dots and singles being the order of the day. I almost played out an 8 ball maiden in pursuit of us not losing another wicket. It was a war of attrition.
The other thing that hampered the scoring rate was Sabin failing to bring spikes - on a sodden pitch having not played in a while, he managed to turn 2's and 3's into singles, and comically fell on his arse on at least 3 times I can remember trying to turn around for the next run. On one occasion he fell so hard, half the opposition team crowded round to check he was alright, as his feet slid forwards, his body stayed still, legs went up, bat went flying and he hit the ground hard enough to cause a noticeable thud and a dent in the ground.
Sabin stealing a cheeky single
The weather continued in miserable fashion, and sawdust appeared to allow the bowlers to continue. As we ticked along to 40 then 50, slowly slowly, something changed in the mood, and a couple of full tosses in the 10th over allowed us to hit a couple of 4's to relieve the pressure coming into the home straight. The 11th over was tight for 3 runs, and we got to the last over needing 6 from 8 to win. We started with a two, and as we were within sight, with players in the hutch, I tried to finish the game with a big hit, and missed, being bowled off my pads. The bowler game me a right good send off, which was funny, but also oddly nice as it suggested I'd done something cricket worthy in not very cricket like conditions.
Brett joined the fray and 4 runs were taken from 3 balls to get us where we needed to be with 3 balls to spare. It was very tense, not aided by the weather, the bowling and the ice skating performance of Sabin's footwear, but we got there. Despite the low score, it was one of those tense games which flipped massively during the Milton fielding stint, not least owing to the utterly ridiculous Perisetla figures of 3-0-5-3 and it felt like we'd recovered from a very difficult position mid innings.
Off to the Lion and Lamb went many for food and beer. The game was live scored, something of a novelty for us. Ant didn't make the pub, perhaps someone swiped right when he was sat next to the dog bin?
No comments:
Post a Comment